Play Classic

Published June 22, 2009 by Benjamin Tseng

While all of my friends were playing their Super Nintendo (and later, their Gamecubes, Playstations, and XBoxes), my parents disapproval of video games meant that I continued to play classic games on my Famicom (which to the uninitiated, is the Japanese name for what is essentially a Nintendo Entertainment System).

It helped that I wasn’t very good (arcade/action games aren’t really my forte – I’m more of a strategy gamer) – so it took me longer to win (I’m somewhat ashamed to admit this, but I still haven’t beaten Super Mario Bros). But, even though the new games had a lot more glitz (and I couldn’t help but pine after a more sophisticated console when gems like GoldenEye and Final Fantasy came out), there was a certain “old school” charm to my dusty old system.

And now, you too can experience that “old school” charm. Thanks to Jamie Sanders, whom I can only describe as a 17 year old prodigy, who has figured out how to turn the NES system into a Java virtual machine — translation: you can now play ANY NES game in your browser just by going to virtualNES.com.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the screen shot above is a picture of me getting beat pretty badly in my all time favorite NES game: Mega Man 6 (or as my Japanese version called it – Rock Man 6)!